USC Annenberg students explain Latino politics for The Guardian

The Guardian in the UK today published the first in a 7-part series on the Latino vote produced by USC Annenberg grad students over the summer as part of the News21 fellowship. "Across America an electoral giant is stirring. The country's growing Latino population – projected to be almost a third of the US population by 2050 – is changing the demographic face of the nation, with potentially huge political consequences," the introduction says.

Half of Pueblo's 106,595 residents are Hispanic, and this demographic should be ripe for Obama's re-election campaign to target. Yet, the political energy among Latino youth has ebbed since its highwater mark four years ago, professors and students at Colorado State University-Pueblo say.

"I don't think that we're very political," said Fawn Amber Montoya, the director of the Chicano studies program at CSU-Pueblo, after a long sigh. "Pueblo really is dead when it comes to politics."